


Punishment.

by epistretes



Series: She's like the wind. [5]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, References to Norse Religion & Lore, loki gets his lips sewn shut, loki is a little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1413412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistretes/pseuds/epistretes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki finds he is not infallible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Punishment.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Violence.
> 
> This will make most sense if the previous installments are read first but it could stand alone as well.

It had already swept through the citadel when he awoke. The Lady Sif had woken to find her crowning glory gone. Someone had sheared it off in the night as she had gone to her rest whole and woken with part of her missing. 

Thinking that he had got away clean, that no one would suspect him at all, Loki headed to break his fast. Before he reached the hall though, two Einherjar came to his side.

"Odin All-father wants to speak with you," they told him. Loki spread a look of acquiescence on his face. 

"I take it that it cannot wait until after I have eaten?" The stony looks on their faces confirmed it and his insides squirmed even if he did not allow it to show.

"Close the door," Odin boomed at his entry and the Einherjar withdrew. Loki set himself and looked at the throne. 

His father sat upon it, his mother standing to the side and looking at him sadly. Thor was standing with Sif wrapped and protected in his arms. As he got closer he could see that although her eyes were red rimmed, she was not crying. She looked at him and the glint of hatred in her eyes almost made him falter in his stride. He did notice that her eyebrows and eyelashes were darker than they were the day before and he wondered at it, although not for long. Odin stood and Loki quailed inside. 

He knew. He must. 

"Loki Odinson, I charge you with the crime of forcibly removing the Lady Sif's hair without her consent. What do you have to say in your defence?"

"What reason do you have for such a charge?" He asked, hoping to utilise his considerable powers of lies and persuasion once he knew exactly what he had to talk his way out of. 

"Heimdall. Come forth." Oh dear. Loki knew that he was busted. Why had he not factored in the watcher? He knew in that instant that he needed to discover a way to evade Heimdall's sight in which to operate. The watchman was a thorn in his side. 

"I saw you steal in to Lady Sif's boudoir last night and shear her hair with a silver blade. You then retreated to your own rooms with your ill-begotten prize where it now lies, concealed." Heimdall told Loki and the closed room in his flat voice.

"You heard it from Heimdall's own lips. Do you still deny the truth of your crime?" Odin asked and Loki could almost feel the heat from his father in his anger.

"Of course the word of the _great_ Heimdall can never be wrong." Loki sneered in his annoyance at being caught. "A convenient thought to let flourish."

"Enough!" Odin slammed Gungnir on the floor and the sound reverberated through the hall. "You have nothing to say in your defence but to try to impugn the word of our trusted watchman. I hereby find you, Loki Odinson, guilty."

"None could argue with the word of the All-father," Loki shot back.

"Do not make this worse," Frigga pleaded and Loki felt a brief stab of guilt. 

"You must restore her hair," Odin commanded. 

"Alas, I have no such spells."

"Then find someone who does. Find a way to right this grievous wrong to one of our own."

Loki turned and strode out of the room, determinedly not looking at Thor, Sif or his mother for fear of what he might see there.

As he knew of no spells within Asgard to achieve such an effect, he went to his rooms and pulled a robe around himself and fattened his pouch with gold and silver. He would away to Álfheimr and locate someone who could direct him.

Wrong though he knew himself and his jealousy to have been, he was angry at his capture and punishment. All good things come to those who wait... he had not waited long enough and now all was truly lost. He believed her to be Thor's, yet it was almost freeing now. There would be no deep, hidden hope. Not for Loki Liesmith.

Irritated that he would have to see Heimdall in order to travel the bifröst, he set out.

"I know not why you did it," Heimdall began in his slow, sure manner "but do not forget this: I have watched you for a long time and too long have you haunted my sister's steps. Too long have you hung in the shadows, staring hungrily in to the light. I open the bifröst to you now for her sake, not your's."

"A lovely speech. Tell me, Heimdall, just how closely do you watch your sister? Does it give you pleasure?"

"Your twisted words will not work on me, Silvertongue." Loki smirked at Heimdall as he put the greatsword in to the machine with the familiar sching of metal on metal. 

Loki ignored him and stepped in to the rainbow light of the bifröst bridge and headed for Álfheimr.

It was not many days before he found that he was looking in the wrong place. The librarian elf at the palace's magic library informed him that no spells known could regrow hair in the manner required. The only known beings in the realms that could come close was Brokkr or the sons of Ivaldi of Nidavellr.

Still, his trip here had not been for naught. The very same elven lady had directed him to two very interesting tomes that she kept in her personal collection. 

"I have read them and absorbed all of the knowledge that they have to give. A gift in return is all I ask." She had whispered to him in the night.

"A gift you shall have," he promised her and he had opened his pocket space and withdrawn two tomes that should never have left the library in Asgard, let alone given to a member of another realm but Loki cared not.

He dallied another month complete, perfecting the spells taught in the tomes and then he finally felt ready to become a skywalker and evade the requirement of Heimdall and his bridge. He let his body relax as he breathed in mother Yggdrasil all around him, letting her envelop him and he opened his eyes to the splendour of the stars. Setting his feet to Nidavellr, he moved across the skies of the realms until he reached his destination. 

"I seek the greatest smith in this realm, for none other could create what I require," Loki told the tavern that he had been directed to. This was said to be the favoured watering hole of the Sons of Ivaldi.

"Then you seek my brother and I," one dwarf spoke up.

"Aye and who might he be?" Loki asked. 

"Brokkr of Nidavellr. I am Eitri."

"Never heard of you," Loki lied for the sake of it and to see if he could make a wager to get even more than he required. Where else would the fun in this lie?

"Aye and who might you be, Aesir?" Came a snorted response from beside Eitri. This then, must be Brokkr.

"Loki Odinson of Asgard."

"I don't like you," Brokkr retorted and returned to his mead. 

"Odinson, I am a son of Ivaldi," another dwarf interrupted. 

"Excellent. I require only the best for this fine and delicate commission. Hair of beaten gold that sits, sways and grows as if real hair on a fine maiden. Can I commission the sons of Ivaldi for such a fine item?"

"Indeed. We shall present it here three days hence."

"Such a thing is not so skillful," Brokkr teased "how are you for wagers, skinny princeling?"

"That depends on the wager and if it is interesting enough."

"I want your head. If I make something better than this flaxen hair you require, I will have it." The tavern rumbled approval of such a high stakes wager.

"Indeed you shall." Loki replied.

Taking lodgings for the time he needed to wait, Loki perused his new tomes until he had absorbed every word and nuance thereof. 

The third day dawned and Loki met the dwarves at the tavern as agreed. The hair that the sons of Ivaldi had made was regarded by all present as wondrous and a marvel of smithing.

Brokkr seemed beaten, producing only a ring. A beautiful, perfectly weighted and balanced ring, but a ring all the same. 

"It seems that I win our wager, Brokkr," Loki crowed over him. 

"Draupnir has not yet shown us... ah," as he spoke, eight identical rings fell from the ring. The cheer that went up chilled Loki to the bone. Even the sons of Ivaldi were cheering for this exceptional piece of smithing. “You owe me your head.”

“True, I do.”

“Fetch my axe, Eitri,” Brokkr called, glee dripping from every word, it was clear that his dislike of Loki was deep.

"It would seem that to take my head you will also take my neck, however that was not part of our bargain, good dwarf," Loki waited until the axe had been sharpened and displayed triumphantly to the crowd. Brokkr stilled, looking comical with the axe aloft as it was. 

"What did you say?"

"Alas, I cannot give you my head for my neck was not part of our struck agreement." He replied. 

"He speaks true. It was not a part of the bargain that you struck," said another dwarf in a gravelly voice. 

"He speaks too much, the Odinson thinks he can trick us and get away unpunished. Nay, he will get a punishment for his bragging or I am not Brokkr of Nidavellr." A quick rummage in his work bag found a large needle and wicked looking black thread like twine. "I will sew his lips shut so that they cannot again flap with bragging, lies or tricks."

Loki turned to flee with the hair for Sif and with Draupnir, but Brokkr leapt and barrelled in to him, laying him flat. Three others turned and pinned him and he found his magic somehow bound. Without his magic, he could not escape nor fight off a whole tavern of drunken dwarves by himself.

The pain was agonising, the only mercy that the huge needle was sharp, but the thread was coarse and irritated his new wounds as Brokkr did exactly as he had threatened and sewed his lips together. 

He lay limp as Brokkr cut and tied off the thread, body wracked with pain and he was lifted bodily from the floor, clutching his prizes. Thrown to the ground outside the tavern on the packed earth floor, Loki heard Brokkr call for Heimdall.

"Heimdall, collect your prince. A pretty mess he makes!"

The lights of the bifröst filled the night sky and Loki nearly passed out from the pain but he just held on. Crumpling on the floor of the observatory as he landed, he heard the sound of Thor landing beside him.

"Brother, Heimdall called me - what has befallen you?" Loki wanted to smile wryly at the thought that Thor now seemingly forgave him or was worried after what he had done but it hurt too much to twist his lips against their bindings. 

"We must get you to Eir." Again he was lifted but this time in to the arms of someone he actually both liked and cared for. The hammer whirled and made that distinctive sound and Loki recalled that, long ago, it had been forged by Brokkr. It seemed a funny fate to find the sound of it soothing after what Brokkr had inflicted on to him. Perhaps it had been his meddling in that forging that had fuelled such hatred?

The bridge whizzed past as Thor flew with the injured Loki in his arms and before long, they had landed at the doors of the citadel. The gasps of horror as people saw him made Loki irritated, but thr doors opened and he was soon borne inside and taken to the Healing Rooms.

Inside, Eir had Thor lay him on the healing table and his mother hurried in and held his hand as silent tears slid down her face. He took more comfort from that than anything else. He waved the golden hair at her as he could not speak.

"I will fetch her," his mother promised.

"My Queen, my Princes... this thread cannot be removed or broken until the punishment is deemed meted out. There is little I can do except ensure that the wounds do not fester." Eir told them. 

Loki was alone until Sif came in. Her hair had grown to about an inch long and though it stuck out at funny angles, he thought she still looked beautiful. Her hair was as dark as an egret's wing - it matched his own.

"I'm still angry with you," she told him as she looked down on his face. He pushed himself in to a sitting position and offered her the wig.

"I shall not take it. Even though you suffered this to get it." That took him by surprise, had he gone too far for any forgiveness from her?

"For many years, people have assumed my hair to be my greatest treasure, my mother included. She hates you, by the way." Sif sat down and looked intently at him. "I was Sif of the golden hair. That always came first. Not that I have forgiven you for what you did, but this has stripped them of my hair as it did me. Now they have no reason to see me for my physicality, only my ability. I'm keeping this hair, even if it is a mark of Loki."

He reached out and touched her hair hesitantly. She did not try to hit him so he continued. It was just as soft as that first day, even with the new length and colour. It was still captivating. 

"You..." it was as if she suddenly realised everything at once in that gesture. "Tell me the truth, Loki. You cannot speak and if you lie I will know. Since that day? All these decades?"

Loki nodded once and let go of her hair. Robbed of his speech, he had no powers of persuasion or lies. He had stripped her of her hair and she had stripped him of his lies.

"You feel more keenly than anyone gives you credit for, don't you?" She sighed.

Loki ignored the painful truth and set down the hair of gold. She did not want it. Instead, he pressed Draupnir in to her hands.

"A ring? Loki, I do not wear jewellery, I-" she was cut off when eight new rings were created from it in her hands. She stared at him in surprise. He mimed wielding a weapon and pointed at her.

"You are a sentimental fool, Loki Odinson." She tucked away the gifts and bent to him. A light press of her lips on his. It hurt, but her lips were soft against the threads. "Get well. I expect you on the training fields when you are."

As she walked out, it did not matter that his speech was taken from him. He was speechless anyhow.


End file.
